Writings about music from a Dublin-based composer.

Tag Archives: Knight Rider

It almost seems too easy to make fun of David Hasselhoff; everyone has been doing it so much, for so long, that it really has no impact any more. It’s a well-worn cliche at this point – the Hoff is ridiculous.

I feel a little sorry for him; when I was growing up, Knight Rider was the coolest show on television. Six-year-old Bill looked up to Michael Knight as, well, a guy who owned a talking robot car. (Any other character traits were somewhat overshadowed by the presence of KITT.) Baywatch was less cool, though I once read on Wikipedia that Mitch Buchannon (the Hoff’s character) once threw a fox around the world, so I can’t really argue with that.

The running gag that he’s big in Germany is an important part of Hoff-bashing. Turns out it’s true – he had a number one hit in Germany with Looking for Freedom, which had been number one for a few weeks in West Germany when the Berlin Wall was attacked and demolished in November 1989. Not joking here. The man himself even performed his hit atop the wall’s ruins, less that two months later, on New Year’s Eve. Notjoking.